I've had a couple requests to add the "Triola vector" to my matrix ofstats. textbooks. Since the requests came from "family", I tried tooblige. The vector

T4 1 1 0 0 0

is close to the origin.

However, I was really not trying to get into the reviewing business.What I wanted was to provide a simple, crude test that could beapplied by anyone to a potential textbook, i.e., I wanted YOU to dothe counting, not ME!

To that end, I should have added a little more detail about how Icounted, though it is more important that you count consistently thanjust as I did. I counted PAGES referenced; 142-144 counted as threepages. If a topic got subheadings, I counted multiple references tothe same page, e.g., I counted

outliers real bad, 162 not so bad, 162 hardly worth mentioning, 163

as 3 page references. Remember, I was trying to get a handle on theimportance accorded these topics, and I felt multiple consecutivepages, or an index listing with subheadings, both indicated highimportance for the topic.

I should also note that the numbers after the abbreviations for thebooks indicated editions. I did not have the latest editions ofJohnson or Triola because I won't take them when publisher'srepresentatives offer them. More recent editions might rate higher,but I would be very concerned about improvements which are merelycosmetic. The counts are just symptoms of something much deeper --two (note the data are bimodal) very different conceptions as to thebasic nature of statistics. Indeed, the whole point of the exercisewas to get a quick measure of which side of this dichotomy a bookinhabited.